Settle down class, I know you have all lost some friends through the expulsions but you still all have work to do.

OFSTED are due at the school to review your work next week and we need to be sure that we pass the inspection. While you are all winners, one of you will be named Grand Champion if you can produce better quality work than the other remaining 9 pupils.

You are no longer part of a House, it is every man for himself. No special roles are in play for the finals week.

Your final exams start now and you have a free choice as to what lesson you focus on. You can re-do an existing lesson or even produce work for a lesson that we have not covered over the last 6 weeks (e.g. chemistry, French, Design & Technology etc).

To submit your final work you will need to post the evidence in the thread and via a PM to me entitled "Task of the Week - Final Exam". Your work must make clear what lesson you have produced work for (e.g. "This is my Drama homework") and there must be a GRcade theme to the work or GRcade must feature somewhere in the work.

Good luck, don't let me down and let's show OFSTED what we are all made of!

Alright gang, here we go. For the final task of the final week, the lesson I decided to tackle was:

CDT(Construction Design & Technology)

It was... surprisingly reminiscent of my actual CDT lessons at school. Spoilered for long and huge (kennethwilliams.jpg)

You may recall me mentioning in the Trading Post some time ago that I have an old, broken Nintendo DS. The console itself is still functional, but the hinge is borked.

Well, my thinking was, I would repair the console - but not just by somehow fixing the hinge. My idea (which I've had brewing for a while, in case we got a design tech question one week) was to open up the DS, take off some parts of its casing, and somehow fit the entire working console within the modified casing of an N64 pad, creating:

First things first, taken the screws out of the N64 pad and pull the two parts apart, ready to strip out the casing. This should have been the easy bit... but no, these damn screws simply wouldn't budge. I managed to get all of three out of the back of the sodding thing. You can see here the slightly-prised-apart controller laughing at what it did to my (admittedly rather pitiful-looking) screwdriver:

Fortunately, I managed to find a screwdriver that was able to remove three screws. This saviour-driver I found in the bottom of a tool drawer - I think it originated from a Christmas cracker.

You can see here just how much little progress I made:

(I took the top of the stick off so I could more firmly press the pad onto the workdesk to try and figure some purchase for the driver in the screw head. Wasn't happening.)

So, onto the DS... which I thought before I started would be harder to get into, but the opposite was true. I managed to find a cheap Y-shape screwdriver to accomodate the DS's awkward Y-shaped screws so taking the DS back off worked out to be pretty easy. I was hoping to find that the majority of the console's innards were fastened to the back, meaning I could affix the fronts of the N64 pad onto the DS console fairly easily (as I measured that the DS D-pad and four buttons would fit quite well into the D-Pad and C-button holes of the N64 controller).

The screws popped out pretty much straightaway!

We're in!

Ah, bugger. This is exactly what I didn't want to find: the console is pretty much all fixed to the front plate of the DS, so it won't be at all easy to replace the front casing parts with zombie N64 pad pieces. I might have to cut the N64 pad a little more than I'd planned and simply stick the parts onto the intact DS.

So, a-sawing I went:

Nearly there...

Success!

You'd think this might make the screws easier to unsettle... but no.

There they all are, firm as ever, the shiny little bastards.

Nothing for it - this part isn't moving any time soon. However I did manage to get two screws out of the right-hand side of the pad, so I wonder it I might have more luck. Let's get to it then...

And sure enough:

This side proved much easier for me to 'hollow out'. I hoped that by doing so, I could get the screws to loosen by simply wiggling the two sides apart, but no dice.

Ghost pad:

Here's the fully-hollowed-out part:

Was that last screw any looser? Was it hell.

Right, back to the other side. Need to hollow this one out but it's all still firmly screwed together. Only one thing for it: float the screws, let's hack our way through.

Success!

Although the screw is unmoved:

Hollowing out this part was more difficult than I expected. I had to use the saw to break up some parts, which didn't go perfectly:

But the end result:

Right, we're getting somewhere with the N64 pad. Let's have a look at that DS.

It's still working (although taking the battery out has factory reset the console). I can manouevre the top screen but I'm wary. There seems to be a wide, flat, coiling wire (or is it just protective?) and then one thin taut string-like wire connecting the two screens. Need to be careful here.

A little bit of pulling brings some of the plastic away. The hinge section on the original DS console isn't very strong. I wouldn't mind but it's taken off some of the part framing the top screen, which isn't ideal:

The piece is too small to saw. But cutting with large sharp scissors doesn't result in a very neat cut (at all).

It'll have to do though...

There we go, sorted.

Some more of the hinge has come away:

I used the saw to make a small incision along the curve of the hinge, then I'll use a screwdriver to prise the hinge away, all the while not getting close to sawing or poking at the wires inside.

Incision made.

And:Result!

So I've made some more incisions. So much for not getting dust on the DS

It worked!

You can see above that the coiled wide wire is totally wrapped around the other wire.It looked like it could easily be twisted back around to lie flat, and thus make the two screens easy to bring closer together or move apart.

WRONG.

DISASTER.

Yep, I've torn it. The wire has obviously been coiled too long. Even though I was only twisting it flat very, very gently, it wasn't having any of it. As soon as I went too far towards flat, the wire itself snapped, as you can see above.

Gutted.

(Unsurprisingly) Fixing the wire back together with tape (it was worth a shot, no? ) does nothing. Now the console lights up, only to die straightaway before a picture can form on the bottom screen.

My dream of the GR DS 64, like so many of my poorly-realised IRL-CDT endeavours, has been an utter failure:

Once all glued together, the plan was to seal over buttons and screens and other areas with masking tape, then paint the entire console a nice GRcade red.

I even researched the colours. The closest I could find that would work with the DS's kind of plastic would be Dulux's "Redcurrant Glory".

Sadly, the Christmas season begins properly for me as of tomorrow, so I was counting on tonight being my night to get my Task polished off. Safe to say it hasn't gone as I hoped.

...

...oh, don't you fret, House Baer - please don't take this as a forfeit. You think after all that I'd give up without a proper submission? How wrong you all are. Ladies and gents, here, in all it's glory - you've seen the working, now marvel at my final piece of coursework - I give you, my CDT project extraordinaire!